When Silicon Valley Bank fell, Nomaco founder Marc Noël was paying attention – soon rallying stakeholders to create a pool of capital so his companies wouldn’t be dependent on a financial institution the next time it needed growth capital.
Noël, the Triangle entrepreneur behind innovations such as the pool noodle and synthetic wine corks, recently closed on $10 million.
The fund, called Noberg LLC and disclosed through a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, was raised primarily from existing shareholders.
“With everything that happened in the banking system, I wanted all our companies to be totally independent from banks and not have any bank debt,” Noël said, describing Noberg as “purely a financial holding company that helps finance the growth” of his companies.
Nomaco, which makes custom foam products, and sister firms such as Vinventions (which owns synthetic cork maker Nomacorc) were not SVB customers. Nor did they have ties the other failed banks, First Republic or Signature. But Noël said he doesn’t feel like the crisis is over.
“I just want to be careful,” he said. “We have some very interesting early-stage projects in the works and you know how skittish banks can be. If something there doesn’t turn out exactly the way it’s planned, which is often the case, I just wanted to be overly careful – not have any bank financing anything in our companies.”
Noël immigrated from Belgium, initially starting Nomaco as a subsidiary of his father’s firm.
Originally manufacturing pipe insulation, the company was founded in Connecticut. The business soon expanded to foams used in concrete construction.
He founded Nomacorc, which develops wine closures, when he moved to the Triangle.
Nomacorc became a separate company in 1999 and is now part of Vinventions, a global supplier of closure solutions Noël founded in 2015 with Bespoke Capital, Heino Freudenberg and other partners.
When Noël moved Nomaco to the Triangle, it had about $4 million in sales. Flash forward to just a few years ago, and the figure eclipsed $200 million.
Nomaco is headquartered on a 90-acre campus in Zebulon that is also home to Vinventions.
Today, Noël is less active in the business in terms of day-to-day operations – spending much of his time with his six grandchildren.
His son, Mike, runs the shop, he said.
Mike Noël is the CEO of Noël Group, the holding firm over Nomaco. Mike Noël told TBJ the firm's companies will need the recently raised capital to innovate.
One example is a recent spin-off, Herc LLC, which makes a waterproof synthetic structural panel that can replace plywood or particle board in transportation and construction applications, he said.